Lent and Holy Week Schedule 2023

 

Cleanse us

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
1 John 1:8, 9

Cleanse us

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 
1 John 1:8, 9

Ash Wednesday Sermon - 9 March 2011 - Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA

The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Ash Wednesday Sermon

9 March 2011 – Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA

In the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia

Sin is a word that brings up a lot of emotion, a lot of baggage.

For some of us, the experience of church over the years has involved weekly reminders of our own sinfulness, our own wretchedness, our own little-ness.  We have been reminded of the many ways that we are not worthy.  We have been reminded all too often of the mistakes that we have made.  We have been reminded of the ways that even though we see the good, we cannot seem to be good. 

So, for many of us the word Sin brings up the ways that the church, and preachers and Sunday school teachers have been a reminder of our little-ness, of our mistakes, of our wretchedness.  Often, what emerges from this kind of teaching on Sin is that people are triggered into feeling guilty, guilty for “things done and left undone,” and just guilty in general.

As a priest, I come into contact with many people who “used to” go to church.  People who see me in the grocery store or at my kids’ schools or about town who express how guilty they feel that they haven’t been coming to church more often.  It can be strange to encounter these deep feelings of guilt.  I tell them that I don’t really care about that, that we’d love to see you, but that guilt shouldn’t be wasted on a thing so small as that.  I tell them that if the reason they are coming to church is because they feel guilty about it, I’d rather they didn’t come.

You see, I am one of them.  In college, I rarely went to church.  Sometimes I went to the interfaith service at the chapel, but there was no Eucharist, and it somehow felt too different than my own church.  I went a few times to the Episcopal Church in town, but for whatever reason it did not become a habit.  Other times I went to the Folk Mass offered by the Newman Center, but the Roman Catholic tradition did not feel like home.  However, one Tuesday afternoon, I decided that I would go up to the Eucharist that was being offered in a Lounge in the Student Center.  Along with my friend Adam, I walked up to the Lounge where an older man was sitting at a circular table in a brown jacket, with a Bible and a few Books of Common Prayer on the table.

He welcomed us, and asked if we should begin.  We looked at each other a bit puzzlingly, was this everyone?  The priest asked if one of us wanted to read the Old Testament lesson and the other to read the Epistle.  He said we’d do the sermon together.

He reached down into his bag and brought out a pottery chalice and plate, a small bottle of wine and a container of bread.  And we began.

We moved our way through the beginning of the service, and when we got to the sermon, he asked us about ourselves.  Adam and I introduced ourselves and told him where we were from, both in terms of our hometown (we were both from Middlebury, Vermont) and in terms of our own spiritual journeys.

I found myself saying that I felt so bad for not coming to church more while in college.  I felt guilty for not coming to church.

It was at this point that the priest, named Bill, said,  “You know, guilt is something that should not be wasted on whether or not you’re going to church.  Actually, if the reason that you are going to church is that you are motivated by guilt, I would rather you didn’t go to church.”

And so, there it is.  We have been given the message by the church that we are sinners but then all too often we have not been given the other side of the coin.  We have not been offered the other side of the pillow, the cool and sustaining grace of God.

And so, today, we begin the season of Lent, and there are those who are motivated by guilt to “give something up,” to try to fast, to give up chocolate, or Facebook, or grumbling or alcohol.  And others “take something on,” perhaps a new prayer regimen or reading the scriptures.  These are good and worthy things to do.  However, what is the motivation?  There needs to be an intention that is deeper and richer than guilt.  There needs to be an intention that is not merely based on the assumption that we are sinners.

Keeping a holy lent, then, would include keeping a whole lent.  Wholeness, holistic.  Considering both the sinner that I am, and also the grace-filled child of God that I am.  On one side, we can affirm that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return,” but on the other side is the notion that we are each made in the image and likeness of God, and are blessed and given the gift of God’s love.

There is a Hasidic Jewish story that recounts a master who recommended having two cards in your pockets.  On one card it would say, “you are but dust,” and on the other side it says, “the universe was made for you!”  Both are true, there is no dichotomy here, there is not inconsistency.  We are but dust, and the universe was made for us.  God does not want us to wallow in a sense of our sinfulness that makes us lesser beings, God does not want us to be so “lowered” that we are not human, that we are bound up by guilt or fear.  But God also does not want us to think that the world is really all about us.  God does not want us to be self-centered narcissists.  God wants us to be whole, whole children of God who recognize our sinfulness and our blessedness.

You are but dust, and the universe was made for you.

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Ash-Wednesday by T S Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn

Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)

Why should I mourn

The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again

The infirm glory of the positive hour

Because I do not think

Because I know I shall not know

The one veritable transitory power

Because I cannot drink

There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

I rejoice that things are as they are and

I renounce the blessed face

And renounce the voice

Because I cannot hope to turn again

Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something

Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget

These matters that with myself I too much discuss

Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again

Let these words answer

For what is done, not to be done again

May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death

Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree

In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety

On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained

In the hollow round of my skull. And God said

Shall these bones live? shall these

Bones live? And that which had been contained

In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:

Because of the goodness of this Lady

And because of her loveliness, and because

She honours the Virgin in meditation,

We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love

To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.

It is this which recovers

My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions

Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn

In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.

There is no life in them. As I am forgotten

And would be forgotten, so I would forget

Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only

The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping

With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences

Calm and distressed

Torn and most whole

Rose of memory

Rose of forgetfulness

Exhausted and life-giving

Worried reposeful

The single Rose

Is now the Garden

Where all loves end

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied

End of the endless

Journey to no end

Conclusion of all that

Is inconclusible

Speech without word and

Word of no speech

Grace to the Mother

For the Garden

Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,

Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye

Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity

Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair

I turned and saw below

The same shape twisted on the banister

Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears

The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair

I left them twisting, turning below;

There were no more faces and the stair was dark,

Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,

Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair

Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit

And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene

The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green

Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,

Lilac and brown hair;

Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,

Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair

Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy

Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet

Who walked between

The various ranks of varied green

Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,

Talking of trivial things

In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour

Who moved among the others as they walked,

Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand

In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,

Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing

Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring

One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.

The new years walk, restoring

Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring

With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem

The time. Redeem

The unread vision in the higher dream

While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue

Between the yews, behind the garden god,

Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

Redeem the time, redeem the dream

The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent

If the unheard, unspoken

Word is unspoken, unheard;

Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,

The Word without a word, the Word within

The world and for the world;

And the light shone in darkness and

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word

Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

Not on the sea or on the islands, not

On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,

For those who walk in darkness

Both in the day time and in the night time

The right time and the right place are not here

No place of grace for those who avoid the face

No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for

Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,

Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between

Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait

In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray

For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot pray:

Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender

Yew trees pray for those who offend her

And are terrified and cannot surrender

And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks

In the last desert before the last blue rocks

The desert in the garden the garden in the desert

Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again

Although I do not hope

Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss

In this brief transit where the dreams cross

The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things

From the wide window towards the granite shore

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices

In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices

And the weak spirit quickens to rebel

For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell

Quickens to recover

The cry of quail and the whirling plover

And the blind eye creates

The empty forms between the ivory gates

And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

'Ash-Wednesday', from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T S Eliot, © T S Eliot 1963, Faber & Faber Limited 

A Gift of Love on Ash Wednesday

Last week was the final week in the season of Epiphany and the readings were all about the Transfiguration of Jesus, that strange and wonderful story when Jesus went up a hill and when he came down, the disciples all saw that he had been transformed. This week, I heard a wonderful homily in our chapel given by The Rev. Gary Jones, the rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church here in Richmond in which Rev. Jones reflected on whether Jesus had been changed, or whether it was the perception on the part of the three disciples that had been changed. It seems likely that (at least) their perception had changed, that they saw the reality of Jesus in a clearer way, not through a glass darkly, but clearly, as Jesus truly was - fully God, fully human. There are those moments, the homilist continued, when we see the world in this clear way, when we see the way that all the people around us are gifts to us, that they are beautiful, and we see that we are one in the Spirit together. Of course, these times do not always last, but they do happen, and are important to reflect upon as we move from the Transfiguration into Lent.

The Transfiguration is still on my mind because Lent began for me in a rather unorthodox way. This would be my first Ash Wednesday as a priest and in the midst of a terrible sinus cold, I went to our chapel to change the colors of the liturgical hangings over from white to purple, and I set out the ashes, ready to be blessed, and I did it all in a kind of a haze as I was still laboring under a low-grade fever and a stuffed head. That was Tuesday night.

I was ready, more or less, to lead three Ash Wednesday services for our school community and had ashes ready, more or less, for about 900+ students, faculty, and staff.

Well, sometimes (as the cliche goes) life happens when you're making other plans. In the middle of the night of Ash Wednesday 'morning' my wife awakened me to say that we'd better head off to the hospital, because our little girl insisted upon coming into the world on this holy day -- and perhaps also insisting upon coming into the world on a somewhat inconvenient day for her 'new' priest daddy!

So, at 2:30 am, I blessed the ashes, and emailed my fellow chaplain and chapel coordinator and gave some instructions...and we were off to the hospital.

Our little girl, Lily, was born on Ash Wednesday, and I (once again) saw the world clearly, remarking at the miracle of the care of nurses and doctors, cherishing my wife and her willingness to literally share her body for these many months, and the care and compassion of family who watched our two older sons (2 and 4) while we were at the hospital for the last few days.

I don't know how love can work like this, but it is expansive, and can grow deeper and wider than we can even imagine. As I watch my newborn sleep, I imagine just a bit of what God must feel as he watches us, and loves us too.

So, I enter Lent not having "done" Ash Wednesday in the traditional way, but, I have received the gift of perception, the gift of transfiguration, and the gift of knowing a bit of Godly love, even in our broken and hurting world. I pray I can hold these gifts lightly and carefully as I move through these forty days.